1 Boring Old Man

The Roll-Out Goes Flat

Ken Silverstein and I have been pointing for the better part of the year to the very strange goings-on surrounding the preparation and issuance of a vital intelligence report on the state of Iran’s nuclear project. The White House, and particularly Vice President Cheney, has been feverishly attempting to stop its issuance. The Director of National Intelligence, McConnell, has been at odds to oppose its declassification. In sum, something was there and the war party was intensely upset about it.

The report is called a National Intelligence Estimate (“NIE”), it reflects the best assessment available to the U.S. Government based on all intelligence sources. It is considered a state-of-the-art product of the intelligence community. This morning a nine-page summary of the NIE was released…

How does the NIE stack up next to the highly dramatized contentions made about the Iranian nuclear “threat” in connection with the roll-out to support a pre-emptive air strike on Iran? The key contention is that Iran is now aggressively trying to make nuclear weapons. The NIE rejects this, “with high confidence.” The next suggestion is that production of nuclear weapons by Iran is on an immediate horizon, within hailing distance of the end of the Bush Administration. Again, the NIE says this is hooey…

National Security Advisor Steve Hadley appeared this afternoon to answer questions about the NIE and to offer remarks. Hadley has never been a particularly effective figure at press gatherings of this sort, and today was a very weak showing even by Hadley’s standards. But the key question came right off the bat: What should we think about the fact that as recently as October 17, President Bush was giving public remarks in which he pointed to the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran as World War III on the horizon? Indeed, a quick check shows the mushroom cloud analogy, which we all so closely associate with the irrepressibly irresponsible Condoleezza Rice, flowing from the lips of President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Rice and Director of National Intelligence McConnell–with increased frequency since the post-Labor Day “roll out.” Hadley responded by saying that the NIE was only completed in the last two weeks and it rests on “new intelligence”–presumably newer than October 17–which pushed the analysts over the line and caused them to close their judgments on the issue.

Is this true? That will be a subject for further study. But one highly reliable intelligence community source I consulted immediately after Hadley spoke answered my question this way: “This is absolutely absurd. The NIE has been in substantially the form in which it was finally submitted for more than six months. The White House, and particularly Vice President Cheney, used every trick in the book to stop it from being finalized and issued. There was no last minute breakthrough that caused the issuance of the assessment.” So what, I asked, if not an intelligence breakthrough, what caused the last-minute change and the sudden issuance of the summary of the NIE? My source had no idea. He speculated, however, that a hardening of attitudes within the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the intelligence community, and in Israel against the plans for an air war in Iran had caused Cheney and his team to fold their cards. “But I’d leave that with a final note of caution,” the source added, “Cheney sometimes appears to give up, but he’s a tenacious son-of-a-bitch. He may very well be back at it tomorrow.”